Artful Thinking

Fringe festival will be taking over Edinburgh next week and for the month of August, we're excited to see that their team has thought about providing people and families with sensory tools to help make their visit more enjoyable.

We'll definitely be passing this on to our clients too.



"We offer free sensory tools to make the festival environment more welcoming for those who might find it overwhelming. These can be ordered for delivery before the Fringe or picked up from the Box Office throughout August."

Find out more 👇

Accessibility | Edinburgh Festival Fringe Official website of Edinburgh Festival Fringe, one of the greatest celebrations of arts and culture in the world. Find everything you need, whether you want to take part or book tickets.

Did you know July in the UK is Disability Pride Month?! We did... We've been busy making more badges to let our clients and their families know about the Disability Pride flag and what the different colours represent.

🖤 The black represents the anger and mourning over the eugenics and the neglect that disabled people fight against.

❤️ red represents physical disabilities.

💛 yellow is for Neurodiverse. .

🤍 white represents invisible and undiagnosed disabilities.

💙 blue stands for emotional and psychiatric disabilities, including mental health issues, anxiety, and depression.

💚 green is for sensory disabilities, including deafness and blindness.

🔗🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ Find out more about Disability Pride month www.thearc.orh/blog/why-and-how-to-celebrate-disabiloty-pride-month/

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We finally have our new craft uploaded to our website, just in time for more pride events this week at Porty Pride... Our Pride dandelion headbands...

We chose dandelions as we love their resilient nature, growing in diverse or impossible situations, and healing the ground around them with their presence.

Dandelion Headbands Why not make some colourful headbands, to wear at Pride, or over the summer... inspired by the defiant flowers dandelions...

"There's so many flags now?Why do we even need this many?!" I'm so glad I'm a part of a community that makes space for others, instead of taking it away, and we're proud we are able to hold space for all our clients.

🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🐙 There are some flags missing. If you don't see yours here, apologies 🖤 We will be commissioning more this summer to try and include all the wonderful Pride flags 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🎉

🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🐙🔗 is the amazing crotchet artist who created our current octopi

🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🎉 We believe in creating and holding space for others, we understand that not everyone is able to speak freely about who they are, for fear of being rejected, told they don't know what they're talking about, or are too "young" to know who they are. That's why having visual representation from flags to q***r characters on tv matter.

***r ***raffirming ***rtherapists ***rrepresentation

"Sharing our fandom passions can help maintain our mental health "

We've been gearing up for Taylor Swift concert this month by supporting our clients to create their own bracelets from their favourite albums and songs.

🎵✨️ Even if you're not a Swifty, you can share your love of your favourite artists or bands. Letter beads are so much fun to play with, and sharing your interests with others is a beautiful way to build connections and meet like-minded people.

🎨💎 Making art from jewellery to images is a beneficial way to boost your mental health.

🧠✨️ Think about how your favourite special interests make you feel and how does it feels when you share this with friends and family.

🥹🔚 It's sad when our favourite things like tv series, movies, books and concerts end. Be mindful of the feelings of loss and grief that can accompany those endings, either planned or unexpected.

🔗♾️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ We have experience working with grief and loss and have availability, please feel free to check out our website and get in touch.

https://www.artfulthinking.co.uk/contact

We love it when our clients want to speak about their imaginary friends they have or had, or a special beloved teddy to toy or object. And when they bring them along to sessions. We love to share the imaginary creatures we grew up with.

🧠✨️ Imaginary friends allow us to explore a make-believe world. They provide space for us to build and develop our communication skills and creativity and can foster a place to build on our self-esteem.

🧸✨️ Having our favourite beloved teddy/toy/keepsake is a beneficial way to have something to hug squeeze and feel less alone with. It can help us feel a sense of bravery or can be the keeper of our sorrows to holding complicated ideas when exploring friendships and relationships.

🪀✨️ There is no age limit to keeping your imaginary friends to beloved teddies/toys/keepsakes, although the society we live in would rather shame us into thinking we should stop having these items with us when we "grow up".

🎨✨️ We value the relationships and connections in the attachments formed to these objects and have therapeutic tools to explore these with our clients.

🔗✨️ Feel free to check out our website www.artfulthinking.co.uk

🎉🥰🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ we love this

Gorgeous.

Happy Pride!!! We are a q***r owned business and proud to be able to provide a safe and inclusive space for our clients.

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ We believe in the importance of having q***r representation in social media, and feel proud when our clients feel able to openly talk about their sexuality, relationship dynamics and feel seen by us.

🏳️‍🌈🎨 We will be creating different creative projects throughout the month that are free from our website.

🏳️‍🌈🔗

Happy Pride Month, wonderful to see all the different Pride marches being held around Scotland 🎉🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🖤

Pride month starts TOMORROW! 🤩🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ We are so excited to be attending Prides across the country, celebrating the incredible diversity of our LGBT+ community, as well as calling for a Scotland that is safe, accessible and inclusive for all LGBT+ people.

We are still looking for volunteers to help us at Pride this summer - check out this link for more info and to sign up. https://www.equality-network.org/volunteer/

Edit: Thank you to folks for flagging a few wee errors on our map - we’ll get them sorted asap!

Edit 2: The map is now updated, thanks again for the feedback!

We love offering additional digital play elements alongside our art psychotherapy practice. Here are just some of the things we have in our creative therapy room.

🎲🃏 We have a range of different card games, boardgames and RPGs available for our clients to choose from. Did you know playing games is a great way to explore how you're feeling about yourself?

🎮🕹 We also have a variety of different games available on our switch. Video gaming is a great tool to explore our emotions, from learning ways to manage our anger to creating spaces for grief and loss within our online communities.

🎨🖼 We've only shown a wee taster of some of the art materials we have in our creative therapy room. We have shelves of different paints, paper, card, markers, inks, pencils and collage materials to name a few. Art making is an engaging way to process difficult feelings, emotions and thoughts.

✨️♾️ We also offer a multitude of sensory tools, to help our clients explore their sensory profiles, discover how they like to stim, or safely support their different sensory needs by providing different tools to touch. Stimming is a great way to express emotions, or help regulate our nervous systems.

✨️♾️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ We love being neuroaffirming art psychotherapists and being able to offer our clients a range of materials to explore their inner worlds, thoughts and emotions alongside their art psychotherapists.

🔗 Feel free to check out our website for more information https://www.artfulthinking.co.uk/services

Ooooo love this service ✨️🎉

💜 Open Evening 💜

It's 2 weeks until our next open evening!

This is aimed at parents, professionals and students, who are over the age of 21 and are curious about The Junction space. We look forward to welcoming you into the Drop In, telling you all about our services and answering any questions you may have.

Please share this with your colleagues, parents and fellow students and we will see you on the 23rd May!

Did you know that costume-play or better known as cosplay can be beneficial to maintaining your mental health? We know that cosplaying is a joyous form of "fanart" and can interlink with different fanbase communities, allowing us share our favourite characters, to develop and master new skills while making our pieces.

🎨Creating your own fan art can be self-empowering, you get to practise and fine tune your drawing skills, share with friends or make new friends when joining fandoms.

🎨Dressing up and becoming a character, whether that character be from a manga, anime, movie, comic, graphic novel or your own creation. Becoming them while you're in cosplay allows you to take on their personality traits, that might differ from your own.

🎨Cosplaying at different events can be a chance to share your love of characters, make new friends who have similar interests, or try out new things (picking a brave or bold character).

🎨Why not try out our new activity? Having fun with "wig" concepts in cosplay. https://www.artfulthinking.co.uk/projects/cardboard-cosplay-wigs

Cardboard Cosplay Wigs You'll need newspaper, masking tape, scissors, character reference image/drawings, paints, PVA glue, coloured tissue paper, measuring tape (or paper). While holding the flat cardboard up against your face, use a pencil to outline the shape of your face, then cut this out and add more shape and textu...

We have had fun this week making our own stickers....especially as it meant we got to make a Stolas sticker... and play around with our watercolour paints...

🎨At Artful Thinking we love stickers, from collecting them, making them and sharing them.

📣 Stickers can be a great way to share our interests, where we stand politically, things about us, and let others know they are safe with us.

♾️ Making our own stickers can be a fun way to check in where we are, play around with developing new skills, exploring different techniques and effects.

🏳️‍🌈 We're pro-trans rights, we stand firmly against conversion therapy practices, and inclusive of other relationship styles.

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Playing video games can mean different things to different people. Playing online can build connections with others, always be mindful of your online safety, though. It can be fun to visit your friends' islands, or chat online while playing among us, or meet in roblox and play the different games there.

Gaming is a great way to stimulate your brain, share adventures and avatars with friends and family.



https://www.facebook.com/share/p/MnLRpHijY3usXzCm/

Digital light.

Wonderful illustrations about what having ADHD can look like.. plus they have wonderful resources 🧠♾️



https://www.facebook.com/share/p/yobeM4cuyUBA5mED/

We've been busy having fun with our new art activity, inspired by the watching the "blob cats" reels, we decided to make 3D blob cats. Please feel free to check out the new activity on our website

3D Blob Cats Using watercolours or paints have fun making "blob cats", experiment dropping paints onto the page, or painting blobs, layering and splashing colours onto a page, leave to dry then using black pens, or paints with a small brush try and find the cats (or any animals or creatures, you desire). Like cl...

Hoping everyone is enjoying their Spring break even though the weather is very rainy this week, we have just the perfect activity to make on our website. What better way to stay cosy if not venturing out than to create your own characters and stories

https://www.artfulthinking.co.uk/projects/figurines%3A-cardboard-rolls

Figurines: Cardboard Rolls Artful Thinking Provides Art Therapy Services in Edinburgh.

You can also follow on Instagram to see more. We're making a commitment to share more about the way we practice, who we are and our values.

Artful Thinking

Spring is here... just reposting an art activity we loved making... Monster flowers... which you can check out on our website and make your own version 🥰🎉🌷

https://www.artfulthinking.co.uk/projects/monster-plants

Happy Halloween from our Cuteness team 🎃👻🧙‍♀️

The October break is underway and we've added another spooky craft to our website, inspired by the Nosferatu Vampire, this creeping craft is sure to add to your October break, why not make your own gifs, or short films... and show us!!

Nosferatu Vampire Coffin Craft Artful Thinking Provides Art Therapy Services in Edinburgh.

Surprised by the amount of pink sensory stimming items we have....

We've already began celebrating the spooky season, starting off our love of everything spooky with a "Haunted doll", where the head moves 360degrees, we'll be posting videos of our doll's head moving soon...
🖤🎨🧠

Projects Artful Thinking Provides Art Therapy Services in Edinburgh.

Always do what makes your heart smile 😍 Celebrating Our Differences Group Therapy Launches 15th September! Contact us today to sign up or for more info!

Today we're at the Trans Community and Care conference in Dundee 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🧠😁

To start off our celebration of all things 2LGBTQIA+ we are celebrating these wonderful q***r coded "villains" Team Rocket.. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🥰

‘Pokémon’ Taught a Generation That It Was OK to Be Q***r Team Rocket, the lovably bumbling bad guys chasing Ash and Pikachu for the cartoon’s recently concluded run, were secretly some of the first LGBTQ characters kids grew up with.

Thoughtful Thursday

Stolen LGBTQIA vinyl sticker

Today we arrived to our therapy room and made a horrifying discovery that our beloved LGBTQIA vinyl sticker was gone from our door. This was followed by feelings of anger, disappointment, anger again at why it was taken.. trying to think who would have done it..

These thoughts created an energy that wasn't going to be easy to process, especially before we were scheduled to see clients. What better way to put this energy to work than painting.

Luckily we have a room full of materials, and some time before our day started. While painting the anger and hurt feelings turned into reflective thoughts and soon we painted a much bigger flag... the saying, "Go big or Go home" came to mind.